A Book Review of the book
All On Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery
By Dick Davis

Henry Mayer has written a massive biography about William Lloyd Garrison (1805 to 1879).  The book is 707 pages in length and felt so heavy when I picked it up that I just had to weigh it on my bathroom scales.  It weighed two and one-half pounds; but, don't be put off by this book's bulk.  All On Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery is well written and reads like a historical novel rather than dull history.  However, Mayer provides the reader with much more than a good historical novel to read.  This is a an important book because Mayer informs his reader about a significant, but forgotten, American hero while he simultaneously uncovers Garrison's methods of agitation that provide valuable lessons for today's religious activists.

I will admit that, if the book had not been given to me be by a good friend, I would have quickly dismissed it.  The title seems to be a bit "charismatic" for my taste and while I enjoy reading history, the book at first glance, presented more than I wanted to know about Garrison.  Once I began reading the book, I was pleasantly surprised by Mayer's skill as a storyteller, the depth of his research and his witness to Garrison's life as a model for contemporary activists.

I think religious people, like myself, who are interested in the interplay between morality, politics, and grassroots organizing will discover that Mayer's book delivers numerous connections between the three.  In addition, the book is a moral testament to what prophetic witness and agitation can accomplish when both are focused and sustained.  I think this book is an important gift to the people interested in grass rooted movements: one with enduring truths that will spark the fires of agitation.

William Lloyd Garrison was a very spiritual person who ignited the conscience of millions, and more than any single person moved slavery, which he constantly called a sin, to the center of the American political agenda.

Such a significant life began in obscurity and poverty.  His family was poor and their economic condition worsened when his father left the family.   His mother, a deeply religious woman, drew from the spiritual vitality of her Baptist congregation, which provided her the support she needed to care for her family.  Her spirituality and piety were Garrison's touchstones through his life.

Garrison moved to Newburyport, MA at the age of thirteen, to become a "printer's devil" at the Newburyport Herald.  This apprenticeship provided him with a much-needed livelihood and later become the means to express his moral outrage against slavery.

On January 1, 1831, Garrison began a weekly newspaper that he named the Liberator and edited, as well as published, the paper for 35 years.  The paper's single focus was to immediately end slavery and it quickly became the voice of liberation for slaves and abolitionists, alike.

His evangelical piety helped to mold his self-concept as a fanatic, an agitator, a believer in the spiritual value of free inquiry, and as a participant in the democratic process.  He was fearless in his opposition to the sin of slavery and continually noted the failure of the US Constitution to immediately stop such immorality.

Additionally, he challenged the institutional church and its unquestionable support for slavery and in the process evolved a religious creed of his own.  He never lost his faith in the redemptive power of Jesus Christ but he was suspicious of religious fundamentalism and preferred to emphasize his individualistic brand of piety.  Garrison's 35-years of active agitation produced the needed moral outrage among the American people that finally caused President Lincoln to embrace the abolition of slavery.

Garrison's methods sought to stimulate, to stir up, and to create controversy, and he considered such actions as a vital part of the noble process in a democratic discussion.  To make a point in one of his speeches, he burned a copy of the American Construction before an audience of several thousand people. He enjoyed his position as an agitator and felt he provided society with a needed service designed to provoke them to awareness.   His opposition, of course, dismissed him as a cracked pot, or as a naive and misinformed outsider.  Yet, he took pride in the fact that the anti-slavery crusade could be waged by such outcasts and considered himself to be among the apostles of the movement.  He embraced the establishments demeaning view of him with relish and reveled in the thought that he was participating in the "foolishness of preaching," as did the apostle Paul.

"Garrison liked to describe the Abolitionist movement as a process of sowing seeds or spreading light, but its work can also be understood, in a phrase his mother used, as a series of doors to be opened." (p240)

Garrison, it seems, had a good internal barometer that could rapidly gauge the opening and closing of doors.  The Liberator (Garrison) put forward the idea for a national antislavery society in March 1831, three months after he had begun the newspaper.  Garrison felt that abolitionists needed to mobilize themselves on the national scale but within local chapters.  The method of organization allowed him to focus his energy upon his newspaper, and a few important public appearances, while using the skills of others to develop local chapters.  The New England Anti-Slavery Society, to which he belonged, was soon affiliated to the new national organization, the American Anti-Slavery Society.   Later, when he took his agitation to England, he would return home to discover that his work abroad had increased his stature at home, as well as giving new energy to the movement. 

Garrison's respect for all people, who he saw as God's creation, opened him, and the movement, to a large cross section of creative, diverse people who became the backbone for the movement.

Mayer provides a historic model of how one man wove agitation, morality, politics, and grassroots organizing into a rope that pulled down the walls of slavery.  But is Garrison's life an example for present day religious activists?  After all, he died 125 years ago.

I think that Garrison's life does continue to teach and agitate today.  And as his life accomplishments become more fully known, I'm convinced that Garrison will become a great encouragement to readers of this book. 

In his day and time, other important social issues were present; however, he encouraged his movement to focus on the liberation of God's creation from slavery.  Our focus, as religious activists, needs to be upon God's liberation from sin and our invitation to wayward Christians and their churches needs to be ongoing.  Inviting them, again and again, to repent and to begin living as Jesus lived and to begin to teach as Jesus taught. 

Perhaps Garrison's life says to us that we need to fully embrace the prophetic role of agitation.  It seems to me that God is inviting us to fully embrace this role within a Christian context.  It is clear that our brothers and sisters are asleep in Zion and some one needs to wake them up and then teach them kingdom ways. 

I think that as religious activists draw water from the spiritual reservoir of Rev. Martin Luther King's life and ministry his example will continue to give life, and direction, to the justice and peace movement.  Now, with Garrison's historical example we find an additional source of water that will nourish our roots.  

The agitating spirit of God has connected us with another prophet.  We have learned much from Jesus, John the Baptizer, Martin Luther King, and many others. But now, Mr. Henry Mayer has connected us to a prophet named, William Lloyd Garrison. Let us listen, for a while, to Mr. Garrison as he speaks to us.

REVIEW -
By Dick Davis

The Sky is Falling!?!: Leaders Lost in Transition, by Alan J. Roxburgh, published by ACI Publishing, Eagle, Idaho, 2005, 188 pages.

This book presents a design for communal missional leadership teams and encourages taking new risks for the reign of God. 

The second page will introduce many readers to a new word.  Liminality, according to the author is “the condition of being on a threshold or at the beginning of a process.”  People in this “tribe” are experienced church workers who are from the modern period, who are seminary trained and who recognize the church has entered into a postmodern, post Christendom period.  The Liminalists recognizes that their world is passing away and wonder if their training and insight is needed to aid in the transformation of the church.  Are their ways to dialogue with the Emergent “tribe?” some of them asked.    

The Emergent tribe is a complex mix of younger people who have creative imagination and hope for the church but are without seminary training and experience.  They look forward to a new type of church and are ready to experiment and take risks with new forms.  However, without training in biblical narrative they may simply reproduce the frameworks and mistakes they so vehemently condemn.

The Emergent tribe ask, “What skills and resources does a leader require to cultivate missional communities of Jesus in neighborhoods where people struggle to manage and survive in a confusing, turbulent risky society?”

Boxburgh suggests that each tribe needs the strengths and insights that the other possesses if the church is to wind its way through discontinuous change, which he describes as, “literally feels like the sky is falling.  Discontinuous change, he continues, “exhausts our physical, mental, and spiritual resources by its sheer magnitude” (p. 29). 

A helpful discussion about change is presented which suggests that discontinuous change is a cycle of irregular rotating change illustrated by a figure-eight image.  Linear change, on the other hand, is manageable by strategic planning methods and is the type of change Liminalists were trained to manage. 

Lastly, a typology of leadership for a community comprised of both tribes is introduced.  Roxburgh suggests that pluralities of skills are needed to form missional leadership teams.  A team is be led by an abbot or abbess who is an experienced person that gently guides the leadership team.  The other leadership skills needed are the poet, the prophet, the apostle, the pastor/teacher and perhaps the evangelist.  With significant redefined of the rolls/tasks such leaders are needed (from both “tribes”) to lead a community in taking new risks for the reign of God.    

Review: Emerging Churches - Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures by, Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger. Published by Baker Academic; Grand Rapids , Michigan , 2005, 345 pages.

If you have wondered what “emerging churches” are or if you are currently involved with one, this book will be a helpful resource both to questioning minds and to practitioners, alike.

Gibbs and Bolger are faculty members at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena , Calif. They spent three years researching the book and a year and a half writing the text. Their approach primarily was the use of interviews because no data existed on these previously undocumented and unstudied movements. This volume may well have established the baseline study of emerging churches.

Identifying over 200 possible case studies, they focused on 50 communities, mostly located in the United States and United Kingdom . Interestingly, the research revealed that emerging churches are located in “world class cities” that are centers of technology, making global impact through mass media. Appendix A is an 89-page description of the 50 groups, listing each by location.

Listening to the stories of these 50 leaders, most under the age of 40, led the authors to identify nine common characteristics that capture the missiological insights of emerging churches. Gibbs and Bolger noted that only three characteristics are core to the emerging churches considered in their study:

1.       Identifying with Jesus (not with organized church structures);

2.       Transforming secular space (not recognizing the dominate secular/spiritual dualism found in Christendom);

3.       Living as community (to create a space for the kingdom to come).

The authors prepare the reader for their findings through a brief look at culture and give 11 key reasons why the church must seriously study culture. The one that intrigued me made the observation that the baby boomers make up the last generation to be happy with present culture. Gibbs and Bolger then spend a chapter identifying “What Is the Emerging Church?” without coming to a clear definition. “Emerging church” is a catch-all term. Churches with that label are in the midst of an uncompleted process, a reexamination of kingdom values in new light with emphasis on calling, faithfulness, worship, mission and community.

I was left with the idea that Christians in the emerging church “movement” are hopeful, thoughtful, service-minded people, who embrace constant change.

You will want to read this book if you desire to discover the radically different ecclesiology and missiology of emerging churches who address the post-Christendom and postmodern context with the Gospel of Jesus.